Happyland

by J. Robert Lennon

  Melodrama, she believed, was crap. And she felt it was her job, each semester, to find a few girls at this hysterical post-feminist nuthouse who could still be rescued from it, whose self-absorption had not yet devoured their souls, and lure them to work in the library with her, where she would subtly, skillfully present them with the raw material which in the proper context could transform them into intelligent, judicious, effective women.

  No—make that human beings. To hell with women. Ruth didn’t like them. She didn’t like men, either, but men had never let her down—they had always behaved exactly as poorly as she anticipated. From women, however, she had expected great things. She was a first-generation feminist. As a student at Equinox in the sixties, she had formed a Feminist Society and for her effort had been invited to the provost’s office and lectured on the proper comportment of a lady. Her first great adult triumph. She had beaten Betty Friedan in poker once and had told Erica Jong to her face (drunk, at a party, during graduate school) that she couldn’t write for shit. Women, she wondered, what have you become? Feminism, now, had gone as soft as the bellies it sprung to life inside; it had given way to you-go-girlism; it was all about the freedom to wear high heels, or the freedom to spend your husband’s money, or the freedom to hire a housekeeper. No longer the freedom to think, the freedom to be other than what was expected of you.

  Ruth had tried to do it the way it was done. She had married, and had stayed that way for five years. In the end, marriage had not met her needs, nor had she met its needs, and she and it had parted ways. Her husband, a research psychologist, had remarried, as they all do, a sexy young thing, and they had promptly reproduced. She bumped into him soon after; the years seemed to have melted away. Full of forgiveness and good cheer, his face had the beatific smoothness of a Moonie’s. She begrudged him nothing. He had found his own contentment: indeed, he had found happiness.

  There would be no happiness today, however. Contentment, yes. Her cigarette was delicious. It was an unfiltered American Spirit. The college girls had turned her on to them. She loved the pipe-toking Indian on the package, an age-old cliché reclaimed and renovated by its downtrodden object. You go, Chief! A sound interrupted her reverie now—the warped clang of the bell in the Crim Hall tower, answered by a chorus of distant, anxious geese. Years ago the college had sent the bell to Ohio to have it recast and retuned; the result was a sound akin to the tide-stretched groans of a haunted shipwreck. Nobody wanted to admit that they had made a mistake, and so the ironworks was paid, the irony endured. Or enjoyed, if you were Ruth.

  Time to go inside. She stubbed out the cigarette in the wet grass, and dropped the butt into her dress pocket. The dress, a favorite of hers, was cotton, conservatively cut, printed with shelf upon shelf of leather-bound classics. Ivanhoe, read her sternum, and Sleepy Hollow her behind. In the library, she found Janet Ping behind the desk, puzzling over a book that had been dropped off. She turned it over and over in her thin hands, biting an already chapped and chewed lower lip. When the weather grew cold and dry, Ruth knew, Janet’s lips would be brown and black with bloody scabs. The girl handed her the book, a novel for teenagers called Jimmy’s Gang. Ruth handed it back.

  “Public Library. Left here by mistake. Put it in the inter-library bin.”

  “Oh!”

  “You’ll be all right here while I work in the office.”

  “I think so,” was Janet’s reply.

  Ruth’s windowed cubicle overlooked the main floor of the library, the only one of the three that contained more books than computers. She had nothing against computers, but they simply did not nourish the soul. That wasn’t an opinion she could voice without her face being laughed in, but her face had weathered laughs enough to have grown impervious, and besides that, she had learned to express her opinions in more subtle ways. At any rate, it was the library stacks—literature in translation, to be precise—that she faced as she opened up the word processor on her non-soul-nourishing PC and wrote the Equinox Village Newsletter for September.

  * * *

  A few hours later Reeve Tennyson stood in his office in the bell tower of Crim Hall, gazing out at the sparse traffic that passed through town, wondering if any of it could possibly deliver his salvation. He was the president of Equinox College, a position that, if you had told him five years ago he would soon be occupying, would have elicited a derisive laugh, and then a nervous chuckle, and finally a terrified stare into the middle distance, as he contemplated what horrible thing he would do to deserve that kind of demotion. For he had, until recently, been the president of a different, larger, better-endowed university, the kind that produced future American presidents, Nobel-Prize winners, and corporate CEOs. To move on to a college known primarily for its remote location, low crime rate, and alternative lifestyles could only be considered a come-down. At his last job, he met weekly with billionaires and heads of state; now he met every morning with the founder and sole member of the Harp Club, or the Hiking Society board, or the chairperson of the Fair Labor Alliance. Sometimes they were late. Sometimes they forgot to come, or changed their minds and later changed them back. He met them anyway, because there was nowhere in particular he was ever in any hurry to go.

  For this reversal of fortune he had no one but himself to blame. He had said the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong tone of voice, and it had cost him his job. Not that he was fired—nothing so untoward as that had happened—but it had been made clear to him that, in order to retain his position, he would have to submit to a significant loss of autonomy, a cut in salary, a public apology, and a host of other petty humiliations, and it was suggested (in low tones, in empty hallways) that it might in fact be a tactical error even to accept these conditions, because one way or another he was going to be gotten rid of, and if he resigned now, for “personal reasons,” it would be a hell of a lot easier for him to find employment elsewhere.

  And so he quit. This was all four years ago. He had been the youngest president in the history of his former university, and now he was middle-aged and languishing at Equinox. They almost didn’t hire him—they’d wanted a woman. The last president had been a woman, and the one before that. But this time there hadn’t been any qualified female applicants. Still, it appeared that Reeve would do. Nobody at Equinox seemed to have heard about his past, or if they had they didn’t care. He was nobody special, to them.

  He still didn’t quite understand the vehemence with which his faux pas had been greeted. It had been blown all out of proportion. There was a professor at his old university, a highly prominent black scholar named Weston James. He was an historian, had used to be a Broadway singer, and had of late become a pundit on cable television, lashing gleefully out at racial hypocrisies in government. He was enormously charming and popular, and a good teacher. His classes had long waiting lists, his office hours produced crowds. Then he slept with one of his students. James was single, and the student was about to graduate, and their entanglement was consensual. But the student was white, and also managed to flunk her way out of a diploma, and was still hanging around campus when the fall semester rolled around, and she was angry and jealous, and so she tattled.

  The student had only meant to embarrass Weston James. There was never any question of prosecuting him under the university’s judicial system—the class she’d flunked wasn’t even one of his. But the story spread, and landed in the school paper at around the same time James published an article in Harper’s about the changing morality of African-Americans in the twentieth century, and a lot of conservative columnists who hadn’t read it pounced on James as someone worth knocking off his high horse. And so the story went national.

  Ultimately, though, it wasn’t a big deal. The student defended Professor James, said that he was a responsible grown-up, that her comments had not been intended for public consumption. The conservative columnists were few, and their detractors many. It was generally agreed that James ought to get a reprimand and not much else, and so that’s wha
t happened. Reeve asked him not to do it again, and James said, “Believe you me I won’t.” And that was that.

  But then a school reporter saw Reeve jogging through campus one morning, and stopped him, and asked him for a closing comment on the Weston James story. And Reeve said, “I think Professor James has learned his lesson. This kind of behavior is not appropriate for a man of Weston James’s stature, and I’m sure it won’t happen again.”

  And the student said, “What do you mean by Professor James’s stature?” He was slight, black, intense, and was holding a small notebook.

  “I mean that he is a very prominent man, a teacher of some renown, and he should not have behaved this way.”

  The student reporter leaned forward, as if waiting for one last tidbit. And Reeve let him have it.

  “Especially an African-American man.”

  Up went the eyebrows. “Especially an African-American man what?”

  “Well, he’s a—he’s setting—he’s, I suppose he’s an example. To, to his race.”

  “An example to his race,” the student repeated.

  “I mean especially a black man shouldn’t—not that—I don’t mean—but, of course, any professor at all. But especially, is all I mean.”

  “Shouldn’t sleep with white students, you mean.”

  “Well yes. But also other students.”

  “But especially white ones.”

  “No, not—I mean, especially not him, shouldn’t sleep with students, especially any students, because he’s a prominent black man…”

  “Diddling some innocent little white chick.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Maybe a little nigger might rub off.”

  “No!”

  “I think I got it.” He folded the notebook and stashed it in his pocket.

  “No, you don’t got it, I mean…”

  “You making fun of the way I talk? You don’t like the way black people talk?”

  Sweating, panting, Reeve felt the whole thing spiraling out of control. “I love the way black people talk!”

  “Right, you love those crazy niggers on the TV, don’t you.”

  And that was the end of that. The next morning the “interview” was published and Reeve was roasted alive until he quit. Weston James called to express his regret that it had to work out this way.

  “I know that kid,” James told him, “that reporter. Sleazy little sonofabitch, if you ask me. But you gotta hand it to him, he nailed you good.”

  “Dammit!” Reeve said. “Weston! Help me out here! I could have fired you!”

  “Come on, you couldn’t have fired me, we both know that. Besides, I don’t know what I could do for you. You quit.”

  “But I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  James offered his trademark chuckle. “You let that id of yours get a little too close to the surface,” he said, “that’s all.”

  Yes, Weston James was right—Reeve Tennyson’s id had always been inadequately concealed. He was always revealing, inadvertently, feelings he didn’t know he was having. His divorce had resulted from an abiding attraction to women of college age, and though he had never strayed from Eve, his former wife, she would eventually tell him that it might have been better if he had. He was a serial represser, she said, and he had spent his days leaking all over their marriage. Now fifty-eight, he was at an age when the sex drive was still robust, but its outward expression frowned upon, and he found himself heading up a college attended exclusively by young women, many of whom sucked face and felt each other up in public. His desire for academic rehabilitation, promotion, and comfortable retirement was strong, but his strategies for fulfilling them were few.

  His assistant, Ellen, opened his door and poked her head through. It was a large head, double-chinned, with eyes that bugged out in a friendly way, lending her an appealing air of perpetual surprise. Her coffee mug, always in hand and steaming, read, WHERE’S OSAMA? She said, “Reeve.”

  “Huhmb?” he said, having meant to say “Yes?”

  “Somebody here to see you named Happy Masters.”

  The name rang a bell, though not the same bell it might have rung for someone who’d spent the summer in the village, or frequented Dave’s bar. Reeve hadn’t noticed the changes around town, because he had only arrived here the other day from his summer in Boston and Maine; and if he’d been here, he might have missed Happy’s arrival anyway. He lived on the other side of town and was not much of a noticer. But he had heard her name before. He just couldn’t think where.

  “Send her in,” he said, crooking a finger and airing out his sweaty collar. How had he gotten so hot, just standing here and thinking? Perhaps it was the flames of hell, licking at the underbelly of his soul.

  * * *

  Happy, for her part, recognized Reeve Tennyson immediately. He was not unhandsome, with his dramatically swooping gray-and-black hair, large strong hands, and prominent chin—indeed, he was cut from the same cloth as Jims. But where Jims’s eyes sought, focused, and seized, Reeve Tennyson’s darted and hid; where Jims charmed with his easy smile, Reeve gave the impression that something had just this moment gone terribly wrong with his mouth.

  It wasn’t, however, his handsomeness, or lack of it, that triggered Happy’s memory. It was the fact that she personally had photoshopped him out of an otherwise excellent portrait of herself and Jims—a picture taken some years ago during a college fund-raising dinner at which Jims was the honored guest; a picture that, Reeveless, now appeared on the “About Happy” section of the Happy Girls web site.

  The college in question was the one Jims had attended, the one Happy had met him at, and the one that Reeve Tennyson used to be the president of.

  Happy realized all of this the moment she saw poor Reeve—and she remembered as well the circumstances of Reeve’s dismissal. She also noticed that Reeve had no idea who she was. She advanced upon his desk, over which he leaned, profusely sweating, and jabbed out a hand to be shook. She said, “Reeve! A pleasure to see you again!”

  Lovely, really, that expression of alarm, the narrowing of the eyes, as if squinting would jog the memory. To his credit, he didn’t stammer; he nodded as if familiarly and said, “Indeed it is.”

  “It’s been…what? Four years?”

  “At least,” he said, sitting down heavily, gesturing for Happy to do the same.

  “No, more than five! How time flies. How long have you been here, at Equinox College?”

  “Three…years,” he said, with effort.

  “Of course, since the James thing.”

  “Ah…yes.”

  “No problems like that here though, eh? Everyone’s white, everyone’s a girl.”

  “Well,” Reeve said with a cough, “we do have…that is, there are some—a few—students of, of color. At Equinox. And there are a variety of, of sexual persuasions.” A blush.

  She had to laugh. His wife, if she remembered correctly, had left him. His salary, no doubt, was a shadow of its former self. His health seemed to have deteriorated: the pale and sagging flesh (though he had, if anything, lost weight since she last saw him—he had merely become looser), the dim and beady eyes, the perspiration. As if at her suggestion, he removed a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead and neck with it. Then he half-turned, as if to get up and open the window. But the window was already open. He coughed again and reluctantly faced her.

  She really ought to let him off the hook—a heart attack would be unwelcome. She said, “Well, Jims is doing fine, in fact he’s in town temporarily, on a bit of a vacation. The money he gave to the college was well spent, I think—Masters Hall is lovely.”

  Whoops! He jerked a bit in his chair, as if receiving a series of mild electric shocks. Almost induced the heart attack after all! “Of course,” he said. “Yes, of course, the law school will always be grateful.” He seemed to be coming awake now, setting thoughts adrift with a gentle shake of the head, an involuntary chuckle. “But of course I’m here now, a step dow
n I guess, but I don’t miss the pressure!”

  “It is rather idyllic.”

  “So,” he said, then cleared his throat. “So! What brings you here, Happy? So far from your usual stomping ground!”

  “I’ve moved.”

  “Moved?”

  She smiled. “I’ve moved to Equinox. Haven’t you heard? I’m renovating the Framdsen House. I’ve bought a few local businesses. I have plans for this town.”

  “Plans…” He appeared to be struggling with the concept.

  “That’s right. I’m sure you’ve had a few?”

  Reeve coughed out another laugh. “Oh, yes. Sure I have, sure…”

  “Well, perhaps we can help each other out. I could use some cheap labor. You could use a bit of reputation-burnishing, right? There could be something here for you, Reeve. A donation, maybe. A ticket out, even. Think about it.”

  He stared, his mouth open slightly, his tongue moving from side to side in the dim, his mind grinding sluggishly into motion. Poor fella: he was doomed to lose. She could have told him this back in the day. The wandering eye, the nervous hands—it was a wonder he managed to get as far as he did before he fell. And the saddest part of all was that he thought he had landed. He thought this was the bottom.

  Well, far be it from her to disabuse him of that notion. There was nothing quite so useful as someone who thinks he has nothing to lose. Indeed, there were, as life had demonstrated to Happy time and time again, treasures at the dump.

  * * *

  Around lunchtime, Ruth Spinks met Happy Masters on the sidewalk in front of the former Makeover Manor. Happy was licking an ice cream cone and contemplating how she might dispense it differently, once she bought out the Triesmans; Ruth was carrying her orange sheaf of newsletters. Each woman had nearly completed her task: Ruth’s sheaf had dwindled to a mere twenty or so papers, and those remaining were wrinkled by her hot damp hands, creased from contact with her body, and jutting at odd angles as they tried to escape the pile. Indeed, one fell to the ground as the women slowed to take stock of one another; for this reason, Happy’s initial impression was that Ruth was haggard, scatter-brained, poorly groomed, and maladroit. She thought that, if she were to push Ruth, the woman would fall right over.